


Annals of the War

by RurouniHime



Category: Inception (2010), Merlin (TV), Pacific Rim (2013), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Arc Reactor, Arc Reactor Failure, Battle, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Developing Relationship, Dreamsharing, Drift Bond, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, Final Battle, Grief/Mourning, Hurt Steve, Hurt Tony, Injury, Intelligence Gathering, Jaeger Pilots, Jaegers, Kaiju, Love, M/M, Military, Multiple Crossovers, Other, Past Character Death, Pilot Trials, Sacrifice, The Drift (Pacific Rim), Tony-centric, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-24 14:35:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/941122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RurouniHime/pseuds/RurouniHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times the humans won. </p><p>(Ch. 1: x-over Merlin BBC, Ch. 2: x-over Inception, Ch. 3: x-over Avengers movie-verse)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mach One: The Age of Albion

**Author's Note:**

> The first thing you should know about this fic is that it is actually three fics, incorporating three of my fandoms into the Pacific Rim fandom. I loved the movie. Saw it last night and fell hard. And as you all have probably noticed by now, the Pac Rim universe lends itself _frighteningly_ well to crossover in a multitude of fandoms.
> 
> So I thought I would play: Three sets of characters, three separate periods during the Kaiju Wars.  
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> **The Chapter One fandom is Merlin (BBC).**
> 
> **The Chapter Two fandom is Inception.**
> 
> **The Chapter Three fandom is The Avengers (movie-verse)**   
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **The Chapter One fandom is Merlin (BBC). **Contains major character death because the Kaiju are scary-ass mofos who stomp on cities.**  
> 
> Please see the end notes for more thoughts, but be aware that they contain spoilers for the chapter and for Pac Rim.

_Mach One: The Age of Albion_

_2016, Russian coast_

 

When the Avalon falls into the surf, Merlin is fighting for breath. Through the viewshield, he sees the sisters’ treasured Jaeger go down, a searing of silver moonlight across rent metal. The ocean explodes upward in a roar of water and foam.

A wave breaks over Merlin and Arthur’s toppled Excalibur. Seawater flushes anew into the cockpit, raging over Merlin, covering him completely. In his head, _Reach for me, Merlin, MOVE!_ a flash of piercing white the sun warm in a field of grain the last field golden hair laugh Arthur’s mouth and Merlin shoves up, bends past his shattered knee, pushes against the cockpit floor as hard as he can.

Excalibur climbs to her feet.

_“—ost the Avalon, repea—gana and Morgause—valon dead in the wate—”_

She’s gone; Merlin can feel it like a blade of blackness through his chest, and a second later, another, right beside the first. They’re both gone. The Kaiju, the big one with talons like scythes and gashes pouring its life’s blood into the sea, raises its fist and hammers Avalon’s lithe helmet into bits.

“Morgan—” Arthur’s cry breaks into a wet hack. He yanks—Merlin yanks—Excalibur’s arm wheels back and slugs the Kaiju they're pitted against under what amounts to its chin, snapping neck bones like tree trunks cracking. Lamia drops into the ocean on its bony back and the wave hits Excalibur hard in the midsection. Merlin feels the punch of it low down in his gut and braces, feels Arthur brace, feels their feet slide over rock, tastes Arthur’s blood between his own teeth. On the shore in the distance, luminescent blue sprays suddenly, raining down in a fiery torrent. A skyscraper crashes to the ground, knocking into Lancelot and Gwen’s Lady of the Lake, ripping the Jaeger’s already ruined right arm free.

The radio sputters, Freya’s voice. _“Draco has fallen, I repeat! Draco has fallen!”_

Sure enough, the land-bound Kaiju, a nightmare whose quicklime breath has eaten its way through the Lady’s alloys, is halfway in the sea again, and motionless, blood streaming into the surf. A feeble cheer echoes across the radio link, even as Merlin Feels it coming, shuts his eyes and Looks. Presses it into Arthur’s head and relishes the satisfying thrum when their minds align perfectly.

 _Now,_ Arthur agrees, the surge of absolute union. They both duck and turn, Merlin’s leg afire, bones grinding together, and there it is, the third Kaiju surging out of the water, neck broken and still coming. Excalibur ducks under Lamia’s blow but the weakened joints in the Jaeger’s spinal shaft let go in a shriek of metal and Merlin loses all control over his right leg. He looks to Arthur, sees him staring back, sees the blood spilling in dark trails from his nose. Merlin’s own nose is bleeding, the vibration of the Drift rattling through in that incessant, infinite pounding. Beyond Arthur, the tear in the cockpit gapes, revealing stars and sea and burning city. 

They grab Lamia, both hands at the neck. (The creature’s claws slam into Excalibur’s side, into Merlin’s—Arthur’s side.) They twist and feel more bones give way. (The creature’s claws wrench free and shear downward, opening paneling like tin foil.) They pull their hands apart and the creature’s neck splits with a horrific scream, spilling blue fire across Excalibur’s arms. (The creature’s hand hammers home, claws gouging through the shattered viewshield and sending metal through Merlin’s side.)

He feels Arthur feel it.

 _MERLIN._ It’s not a sound, it’s a death, it’s what death is made of, it’s pain and rage and words he whispers to Merlin at night and the end and the heat of Arthur’s breath over Merlin’s mouth and desperation and the hand he presses over Merlin’s heart and hopelessness. Arthur’s drowning, his lungs are filling with fluid from the blow that tore open their Jaeger’s cockpit.

He feels the Drift give a little, and he Reaches. 

Somewhere in the ether, Arthur takes his hand and grips it tight.

 _“We’re coming to you!”_ Gwen says into his ear. The Lady of the Lake hobbles into the ocean, and the waves beat her back toward the shore. The last of the Kaiju, the one still crushing Avalon’s headpiece beneath its fist, the one they don’t have a category for— 

The Beast.

—turns on her as she comes and hurls a jet of boiling liquid from a chamber on its throat. Gwen’s scream shears through, and Lancelot’s. Metal melts away, the violet paint dripping from the Jaeger’s chest plate. The Lady lowers her head and charges, rams right into the monster’s middle and sends them both crashing into the water.

 _Walk._ Merlin sends it, Arthur moves, Excalibur shudders along, joints whining. One foot and drag the other. One foot and drag the other. 

The Lady still has her sword and she uses it, a shaft of pure steel up through the water, cutting through the Beast’s throat in a single furious thrust. The Kaiju roars and lashes out, rips the other arm off Gwen and Lancelot’s Jaeger, and tosses it away. But it’s thrashing, rolling like a crocodile in shallows, flattening the Lady’s damaged frame. The tail flies up from below the surface before Merlin—Arthur can see it, razor spines, and smacks Excalibur across the chest. The spines dig in, lift Excalibur, hurl her through the air.

They land with a crunching thud, into darkness.

Arthur’s heart stutters and Merlin opens his eyes. He tastes blood, and worse, on the back of his tongue. 

_“—erlin! Arthur! Are you alright?”_

Merlin coughs, feels the sway and wash of Arthur’s unconsciousness, flowing like the sea. At least there is no pain. “No,” he rasps. “We’re not.”

The next voice to break over the comm curls steadiness around Merlin in the darkness. _“Merlin?”_

“Gaius.” Merlin coughs again. His side aches.

 _“Merlin, the Lady is gone.”_ Gaius speaks leadenly. Tired. _“You are not alone. Multiple Kaiju approaching.”_

Merlin twists his head and stares out across the sea as the water roils, a great cyclone of brine dipping below the surface. “When?”

_“They will reach you in twenty-five seconds.”_

He tries to find Arthur in the Drift. Arthur’s mind has spread out, as smooth as a lake at sunset. He’s as beautiful as he always was, such vibrant colors and generous warmth. Merlin hears his own voice, a memory of words spoken on a breath. Merlin tastes their first victory. He inhales their first Drift.

Even in unconsciousness, something in Arthur’s mind catches hold, interlaces itself with Merlin and embraces him. Merlin sighs and sinks back into the cradle of the suit. To the north, its edges blazing in fire, the city still stands tall and proud. Its factories, its people. Defiant and defenseless.

They have no sword, blasted to bits by the Beast, no cannons, used up on Lamia, nothing but the blood in Arthur’s veins and the bones in Merlin’s body.

It’ll be enough for this.

“Gaius?”

_“Yes, Merlin.”_

“Will you get a message to my mother?”

Gaius is quiet. Then— _“What shall I tell her?”_

“Tell her…” Across the Drift, Arthur’s strength flows into him, an ocean the opposite of this one. An ocean full of gold. Merlin smiles. “Tell her I was thinking of her.”

He shuts his eyes. Shuts off the comm, flings wide the bridge between himself and Arthur. And Reaches.

Reaches for the approaching Kaiju. 

One of only three pilots in the world who can do it, who can feel those behemoth hearts beating and sense their soaring thoughts and taste their cavernous souls. The last of three. The other two are dead now in the ocean to his right. Merlin slips off his glove and stretches his fingers before him, all he has left. The energy of the three Kaiju coalesces: predator, royal blue, jagged teeth… juvenile, fierce heart, yawning maw… ancient, cool eyes, pearlescent scales. They gather themselves into him and in the miasma, Merlin finds them. Grabs hold of them in the palm of his hand.

Twists himself around them, and cradles Arthur on the golden sea, and blows everything apart into fragments of light.

...  
...  
...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **SPOILERS FOR THE CHAPTER, MINOR FOR PACIFIC RIM**
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> My sincere apologies for the high body count. But there are specific reasons for why I chose this route.
> 
> The Arthurian legends take place so very long ago, and most of the people in them did die as part of the legend, or at least disappear in some form. Thus, I wanted this section to become a Kaiju Wars legend: this is the battle that they all talk about, the greats, the ones who sacrificed all. I also wanted to incorporated Merlin's magic, as well as talk about the first pilots, the ones in the big irradiated clunkers that caused lasting problems for survivors later. I thought, given Arthur's "death" in the legends and Merlin imprisoning himself in a tree until his king returns, that this was a good fit for this particular group.
> 
> I promise the following sections will not be as cruel. Stay tuned for chapter 2, and a completely different Arthur.


	2. Mach Two: DreamShare Division

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though this fic jumps fandom crossovers, the story itself is contiguous.
> 
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> 
> **The Chapter Two fandom is Inception. **Contains past character death**
> 
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> 
> Further notes at the end of the chapter.

_Mach Two: DreamShare Division_

_2026, Taiwan_

 

Arthur wakes screaming. 

His head resonates with wordless howls, a clangor of hatred, primal fury. He yanks his hands up to his face to claw the sightless horror from his eyes, but his wrists are strapped tightly to the armrests. All he can do is writhe, arch, scream and scream and scream. 

_“Hold_ him, damn it, help me—”

Hands land on his shoulders, pushing him into the chair. New pain pierces, a tangible sting, and Arthur gasps raggedly, tasting iron. An instant later, a sluggish chill floods his left arm, up over his shoulder, into his chest and groin and feet. His head. Arthur’s voice fades off, and the bellowing quiets as the images suck away into the fog again. He lurches painfully, too slowly to do any good.

“Eames.” The word slips out in a muddle, not a name at all. Arthur’s head lolls to the side—wrong side—and he tries to right it. In his head, bursts and flashes of the Kaiju soup penetrate, piercing through the drugs to prey on muscles that cannot respond. Still, Arthur jumps a little, fingers curling hard enough around the ends of the armrests to hurt. “Eames.”

“Still under,” Yusuf says above him. Arthur peers up at him, fuzzy, fuzzy Yusuf, Kaiju-blue tinting his skin and eyes, swirling behind him like an eddy. Arthur strains feebly against the straps, forgets and tries again. Needs to wipe that color away.

“Still. Still what?”

Yusuf takes Arthur’s chin in one hand and forces his gaze. “He is still under, Arthur.”

A beat of his heart. Two. Arthur comes fully awake. “God—” He heaves upright, hauling at the restraints. Can’t even sit up. The probes pull, still attached above his ears. He looks to the right this time, and there’s Eames, supine on his chair and pale as chalk and still as death.

Still under.

“Get me up! Damn it, get me—”

Yusuf manages one strap, another set of hands fumbles with the other. Dom tries to grab Arthur. Force him back into the chair. Arthur hammers a fist into his shoulder and worms out of his grasp, falls to the floor and crawls across the space to Eames’ chair. “Bring him out, for fuck’s sake—”

“We can’t!” Ariadne thumps down on the other side of Eames, leaning down into Arthur’s line of sight. _“Arthur._ They’ve neutralized the kick.”

“No.” He scrabbles with Eames’ restraints, then the tube at his arm, but the needle has already been disconnected, the Somnacin no longer flowing. The only thing keeping Eames under now is _them. “No.”_

“Arthur, what happened?” Dom demands in a low, tight tone. He kneels at Arthur’s side, turns him away from Eames at the shoulders and gives him a shake. “Did you see them?”

“They saw us,” Arthur whispers. He can’t help the moan, the memory of having his mind pierced, pieces of him stripping away, reaching to grab them like fluttering rags, feeling all that mortal wrath roaring through him like their claws rip through the Jaegers. What they did to him, what their minds are capable of doing to such small, frail minds as a human’s…

They’ll rip Eames’ very thoughts apart, now that they know what he’s really after.

“Did you find anything?” Dom presses, tilting his head until the desperation seeps from his entire frame. “Anything at all that we can use? How they came back or—or where they’re headed next?”

Arthur shakes his head, and misery swamps tenfold. Eames was always better at the Drift, brought less into it. Let the rest go. Concealed himself in the very fabric it was made of and slipped in and out like he was riding swells. Compared to him, Arthur is boxy and stiff. Unyielding. Arthur excels at stability; his job is to bolster Eames, smooth the constant inhuman tremor and strengthen the foundations of the space. Give him firm ground to tread through the Kaiju subconscious. But he’s out here now, ripped from the dreamspace and leaving Eames alone in its clutches, and he doesn’t give a damn what military intelligence thinks if they lose yet another of their team to this madness.

In the center of the room, the lobe of Kaiju brain shifts in its chamber, and Arthur decides.

They did it before, younger and brasher, insulting each other like siblings and circling each other like sharks. It’s been years and their own Drift never quite took, never gave them the rights to a Jaeger, always a grain of sand chafing away somewhere, but Arthur knows his way through Eames’ mind, he remembers how his daydreams smell and how his wishes taste, and he will not let the Kaiju take Eames from him like they took his family, like they took Eames’ family away from _him._

He drags his chair closer, throws himself back into it, and starts strapping himself down. “Bridge us, Yusuf.”

“Arthur, we barely got you out—”

 _“Do_ it!” 

Yusuf glances uneasily at Dom, and Arthur knows they’re remembering Mal, who died, remembering Robert, who came out forever changed. Remembering Saito, who is still lost somewhere in the blue. The scores of pilot-washouts who dip and dip and dip into the Kaiju sea (they want to help, they _need_ to help) and lose a piece of themselves every single time, until there’s nothing left.

Over Eames’ barely rising chest, Ariadne stares at Arthur, tears glinting. Arthur meets Dom’s eyes, full on. “Please,” he whispers.

Dom moves at last, takes the tube from Yusuf and kneels again at Arthur’s side. He swabs the hollows of Arthur’s and Eames’ elbows, inserts the needles, stringing them together, and depresses the plunger and then the probe ignition without a word.

This time Arthur floats. 

Eames’ memories are like mist, wraiths shimmering on the air. The wild blue is all around them, stabbing through like shafts of electricity, swallowing whole faces, whole landscapes—a city of Ariadne’s, untouched and folded in over itself… a riverbed dark with soot and blood… a seaside house half gone, smacked off its foundation over the cliff… a crumbled bedroom wall with a poster of a set of drama masks, burning.

The Kaiju yank at it all. Shred it all. Gore it full of holes until it seeps crimson.

Arthur shuts his eyes and listens.

He feels them dragging at him, looking for him. The mere intention stings along his skin like tiny blades, seething and bubbling with the outrage of invasion, but they don’t pin him, can’t seem to find him. A shard of sapphire light grazes his arm, and Arthur feels the ice in it, the depths of the sea, the thunderous weight of water, the black, black void. He forces himself silent. Still.

_Eames._

The Drift startles him, a frayed thread snicking off of something out there in the maelstrom. Arthur gasps and can’t hear it. But he feels the surge in his lungs. The howl deafens, shattering his eardrums. Arthur listens hard, in the only way he still can.

 _I’m here,_ he says. _I’m right here._

He’ll wait, as long as it takes. Days, years, centuries, until he grows old and brittle and the Kaiju tear him to pieces, until there’s nothing but his goal left, nothing but a single thought. A winking red beacon in the blue.

Their Drift catches without warning, so strong and pure that Arthur’s eyes shoot wide and all he sees—

He sees—

Mal’s smiling face, curls twisting in the wind as she presses her hat to her head. His mother, reaching down to lift him up from the sand where he’s fallen. A man with a boy on his shoulders, bounding down a winding dirt road. A familiar hand, the forearm inked in scrawls of Latin, stretched out of the ash and dust to shake his. A cigarette passed between soldiers. 

His own face. His eyes, deep brown and crinkled at the edges. The arc of his shoulder and a wistful wish for touch that is definitely not his own. His real smile, so rarely allowed to live since that day in San Francisco. Fingers he knows, hovering just shy of his hair. Fierce relief and the sweet, gentle flavor of adoration. Something that he thought had been a Drift, once, but is so petty and rickety compared to this that it shames him. Gladdens him. Fills him with light and peace.

_Eames sees Arthur for the first time, dirty desert camo a gray tank top sunglasses down his nose, basketball on sun-cracked court, sweat dark down his sides, and Eames’ jacket is like a firetrap, heartsore mind thick slow jetlag, Arthur looks stops palms the basketball like it’s nothing takes off his shades and looks and_

looks up and sees Eames, standing in the storm. Between them coils a twisting beam of light, woven as tight as the strongest cable.

This time, Arthur stretches out _his_ hand.

**

He comes awake to silence. He breathes deep, cool air filling his lungs. The searing blue fades in flickers and sparks, and Arthur turns his head. Eames is awake, staring at the ceiling, and then he turns, too, and all Arthur can see are gray-green eyes, a twilit sea. 

He reaches and finds Eames’ hand, trails up his wrist until he can work the buckle free. Curls his fingers into Eames’ palm.

Eames finally, finally focuses on him. “Arthur.” The word is a breath, so very familiar. Arthur lifts Eames’ hand, brushes knuckles to lips.

And Eames smiles, weak and real. “I know how they got back through.”

...  
...  
...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The immediate question was, of course, what would it be like to dreamshare with a Kaiju? IMMENSE, I'd think. Horribly unsafe. The Drift meshes well with the concept of dreamsharing (again, PR fandom, were you MADE for crossovers??? I think ilu), but I also like the idea of finding out what the people who didn't pilot the Jaegers got up to during the war. What if they tried to train as bonded pilots, had basically successful Drift experiences, but were turned down in the end for other reasons? Surely they have a unique set of skills they can offer to the war effort on other fronts...


	3. Mach Three: Annus Mirabilis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The Chapter Three fandom is The Avengers (movie-verse).**
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> This one is the long one, and the one that ties in most heavily with the movie, so BEWARE OF PACIFIC RIM FILM SPOILERS! ^_^

_Mach Three: Annus Mirabilis_

_2036, Kyushu Island, Japan_

_Ju_

 

“Sir, if I may?”

Leaning into the abdominal cavity of the Hawk and Shield, Tony braces one hand around the lip, stretches out across the cavernous space beneath him, and gives the wrench a final twist. The core lights up, a beautiful starlit blue, and the Jaeger purrs to life, systems winking on around him. “You may, JARVIS.”

“Steven Rogers’ transport has just landed on Platform Five-B.”

Tony’s hand stills. He hangs over the maw of the Jaeger’s innards. His heartbeat seems to echo back to him.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. Leans out to get the next of his tools. Goes back in.

JARVIS says nothing. 

 

_Kyu_

 

Tony remembers fire. Voices, like a shout in the dark.

 _War Machine has engaged the enemy at the north face… Category Six, Category Six! … Double incursio—_

He remembers the blare of the Shatterdome’s alarm inside his skull, the way his arms were abruptly empty, his body still hot with another’s heat and his mouth still numb, the taste of someone else lingering on his tongue. The way they ran side by side in silence until their paths split, hangar and control room.

He remembers the lovely blue like a supernova, the way his massive reactor lit up the sleek lines of the Howling Commando and set the sea alight in ways the Kaiju never could, the way the Jaeger’s shield sang as it sliced through the air.

He remembers the way the darkness sucked in when that supernova guttered.

A scream he never, ever wanted to hear again. A Drift, ripped.

Yes, Tony remembers Indonesia.

He remembers Redskull coming through the seawall, claws and teeth and that hellish roar, the heatflash _boom_ as the fuel stores went up, the erupting end. He remembers Pepper, blood streaming down the side of her face, dragging his body through the corridors by one arm as the Shatterdome collapsed, pulling. Pulling. 

He remembers waking up to a world without her in it, without Bruce, without Rhodey and Jane and Erik. And the holes just kept opening. The Odinson brothers in their Mach Seven, Valkyrja. The Storm siblings and the Maximoff twins. The only Mach Eight in existence, brought low against the largest Kaiju anyone had ever seen.

A week of hazy consciousness, potent drugs, then day after day of too-sharp awareness, one harrowing goal with a ticking clock. 

But that first night when he opened his eyes, he heard about the Howling Commando’s stagger to shore, about the broken pilot they dragged out of her burning guts into the surf. By the time Tony was able to stagger upright on his own, Steve had left the corps, a changed man, as blank and cold as a sheet of ice. And James Barnes was dead.

Tony swore that never again would a Jaeger under his watch lose power like that.

 

_Hachi_

 

“This is highly inadvisable, sir.”

“Mute.” Tony sticks the tweezers in his mouth and reconnects the spliced wires. “Patch through with the new connection.”

JARVIS doesn’t answer through the console speaker this time, of course, but Fury’s voice sounds mid-sentence in Tony’s earpiece, and Tony leans back on the wall outside the office with his hands in his pockets.

“—but desperation doesn’t even begin to describe the times we live in. This, here, is no holds barred, all chips in, and either we win, or we bust for good. I realize this is not what you wanted—”

“It’s not about what I wanted,” Steve cuts in quickly. “Even if I— Sir, I’m bringing nothing to this. I do not have whatever those pilots had.”

“If anyone had whatever _those_ pilots had,” Fury answers, unruffled, “this war would be over.”

“I’m in no state for this,” Steve says, blunt and flat like an automaton. As if the reality doesn’t really matter to him.

“I think you aren’t giving yourself enough credit, Ranger.”

“Steve.”

“I’m sorry?”

 _“Steve._ I haven’t had a rank in two years.”

“You have one now.”

A moment of weighted silence, and then Steve utters, “This is going to end badly, Marshall.”

“Your concern has been noted,” Fury answers. A pause. “Two days to find your sea-legs, then trials begin. You are dismissed, Ranger.”

Tony terminates the feed. The door to Fury’s office opens, and he pushes off the wall.

“I asked for you,” he says, just as Steve turns his direction, and Steve freezes. The door shuts with a clang behind him. The hallway is empty, save for the people passing across its mouth down the adjoining corridor.

Steve stands there in dress tans, his cap tucked under one arm. He’s thinner than he was, more wire than muscle. His eyes move over Tony slowly, but the thin lines around his mouth do not change. Up close to that piercing blue for the first time in two years, Tony feels snagged, tangled around something he’d long forgotten. Extrication for a second time will be difficult.

“You shouldn’t have,” Steve says.

It’s not politeness, just a fact, and stated as such. Steve moves around him, and Tony darts forward, matching the other man’s pace. 

“We need you. _We need you,_ Steve.”

At the sound of his first name, Steve’s frame shudders. He halts again. Tony sees his fingers curl tightly around the cap in his hand.

His face turns, just an inch. Barely looking at Tony. “I’m not what anyone needs right now,” he mutters, and walks away.

Tony lets him go.

 

_Shichi_

 

“Drop in here.” Tony sweeps his finger from the Shatterdome’s location to the ocean just west of Challenger Deep. “Cold currents’ll shield heat buildup from the rotors and take pressure off the cooling systems. We can set up recovery from Guam.”

Fury looks over his work, spread across the table, and eventually nods. “Alright.”

Tony remembers a time when he and Fury were always at odds, never of a mind about anything. But he can’t remember the last time it mattered enough to be devil’s advocate in a debate no one could control anymore.

These days, it feels like everyone is just along for the ride as the world swirls inexorably down a dark, deafening vortex.

“We’ll need one suit to make the drop, one to run interference in case they get some company. The Hawk and Shield’s got the speed. We’ll have the Widow’s weaponry—”

“She’s crippled,” Fury interrupts, and Tony stills. Fury’s one eyebrow is raised, his hand curled against his chin where he leans on his elbow. “Skrull took out her coolant system off South Korea and compromised her cranial bulkheads. Whole thing filled with water, had to be fished out of a trench.”

Tony straightens slowly. “Pilots?”

“Hopped the escape pods. Carter’s concussed, broken collarbone, but Romanov’s bringing her here anyway.”

Just as well. There’s been no time to build anything new; all their energy is drained into what they can repair, as fast as they are able. Even with a compromised Black Widow, they’re down to three suits. The last time they had contact with Australia and Chile, they could bring that number up to six.

That was over a month ago, though, and Tony’s learned how little optimism actually matters lately.

“Use her reactor for the drop, then. The Avenger’s got comparable weaponry.”

“And only one person to fire it,” Fury mutters. Tony stops again.

“He’s in? He said it?”

Fury stands and leans over the map, hands on either side. “At this point, I don’t really care what he says. He’s stepping up, or we’re shit out of luck.”

It’s truly the only argument Tony knows that would clinch Steve’s role in their fate. He wishes he could hate Fury for using it, but he doesn’t know if Fury _did_ use it. The truth is slugging them all brutally in the face on its own.

“How many candidates do you have for co-pilot?” He asks it while still studying the specs in his hand. It’s easy; he knows them back and forth.

“Fifteen,” Fury grates, and Tony huffs laughter, feeling anything but amused.

“Scraped the bottom of the barrel, did you?”

Fury twitches then, a spastic movement Tony’s only ever seen once before, and that was right before Jane Foster simulated the timeline for humankind’s destruction, should the Kaiju take out all remaining Jaegers. “Everyone I can spare is up for consideration.” Fury goes silent for a moment. “Sitwell’s a good bet.”

Sitwell’s a different person since Taizhou. And Foster’s gone, all of her genius gone with her. Tony’s web of friends is fraying thin. He clears his throat and raps his knuckles on the pile of still-warm papers the computer cranked out. “Well. The reactors are all set to a matched frequency. Any one of them can be dropped in there, should get on like a house on fire.”

“What I wouldn’t give for one more pair of Dreamers,” Fury mutters, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Right here. Right now.”

“Yeah, well. If wishes were shots, we’d all be hammered.”

Fury leans over again, his single eye intent on the energy graph on top of the stack. “The reactor can’t just shut the door, Stark. Last time they did that—”

“I know, I know, they see a bigger lock, they get better dynamite. And I told you the reactor isn’t going to explode.” He has no idea what the pilots did way back at the beginning of the war, how the hell one Drifting pair closed down the breach the first time; all he has are the energy readouts of the event that gave them peace for nearly a decade. But Tony can duplicate that level of energy with an arc reactor, and thanks to the DreamShare Division, the final strike will be as precise as a laser. Whatever they did then, they’ll do now, and this time at the heart of the breach itself.

An arc reactor collapsed in on itself, the inter-dimensional gateway forever devouring, forever birthing, open and closed. Two realities at once. If the Kaiju can find a way through that, then maybe they deserve to get in.

And if not, then Jane’s last posthumous ‘act’ will be to save them all, because she was the real brains behind this plan, the only one to think in more than three dimensions, and to prod the others into following her out on that limb. Tony wishes he’d had the wherewithal to come up with it on his own, but it was, and still is, a joint effort, and everyone else is gone. All Tony can do now is give their hypothesis the tech it needs to thrive.

Fury nods to himself, then nods again. Reads through the algorithmic predictions one last time. Tony feels like the room is teetering on a cliff, he himself the only one to witness a milestone in the making.

“We go in three days,” Fury says. And that’s it, decision made. For better or for worse.

 

_Roku_

 

Tony arrives at the training room late. It isn’t by design; his feet drag on their own, and his mind skitters after everything it encounters, except for the one thing it can’t ignore.

He’s not sure if he wants to see this. Not sure if he can go without seeing it.

The room is already full, people spilling out into the halls. He can hear the clack of wooden staffs, and he inches his way around the back of the crowd, hugging the wall until he finds a clear spot at the top of the dais. Fury hasn’t arrived yet—he won’t until the hopefuls have had a chance to limber up—but it seems everyone has come to see a living legend in action.

The first bout ends just as Tony arrives at the top of the stairs. The next challenger steps forward. And then the next, and the next.

Tony stares, openmouthed in dismay.

The beauty of it, the sweep and slide, the _grace…_ It’s gone, all of it. Steve’s movements jerk at him like the limbs of a malfunctioning Jaeger. He is one breath too slow, one step too close. There’s something broken and callous about all of it: he takes his opponents down with a frenzy that curdles, and each blow cracks, discordant off the room’s walls. 

And the look on Steve’s _face._

When the fifth hopeful goes down with an enraged growl, Tony cannot keep still any longer.

He kicks his shoes off and bounds down the stairs, grabbing the man as he scrambles into a lunge and pushing him off the mat. The man stumbles back, and Tony snatches the bo from his startled fingers. He whirls it, finding his grip as he turns to face Steve.

Steve stands in the center of the mat, breathing hard. Staring. Tony sweeps the bo to the left, an extension of his arm, and nods him forward. “Come on.”

At first Steve doesn’t move. The entire room is so quiet Tony can hear water trickling in the pipes overhead. He waits, perfectly still, eyes fixed to Steve’s.

He hasn’t trained formally, but he has trained. He knows everything the Jaegers are capable of, every move taught to their pilots, every technological compensation he’s had to make in order to weave it all together. He has broken in the neural interface himself on every suit still standing, and Steve, with all his training, all his own knowledge, is aware.

Steve’s first step is nothing but a shift in weight, but Tony’s body reacts without thought, bracing, bending his back knee. Steve moves like a gust of wind, covering the distance in two strides and slicing through the air with his bo. Tony whirls aside—wood clacks on the way by—and suddenly Steve’s bo is under his, flipping his up, clearing the way completely.

The end of the bo sweeps to a halt a centimeter from Tony’s shoulder. Steve’s eyes widen, as if he did not expect to gain the point. His knuckles tighten around the shaft.

Tony gives him a single twitch of warning, and starts again.

Their bos clack together, a staccato drumbeat as they weave their way around the mat. Tony sweeps low and Steve jumps, aerials past and comes at Tony’s back, but Tony whirls and drops, catches Steve’s knee and flips him. Steve falls and rolls upright, barely a sound, slapping Tony’s bo aside with a smooth thrust. The crowd is beginning to murmur, soft sounds chasing each other around the room. People jostle to see, to get closer, rising on their tiptoes. Tony gives way, backtracking across the mat, skipping and darting to keep ahead of Steve’s advance. In the end, he’s forced to roll himself, diving over Steve’s bo, flinging his own straight out to the side. He comes up on one knee and spins just in time to meet the downward swing at his skull. He parries it, meets it again, forces his way to his feet as Steve retreats. 

This, _this_ is what he was meant to see: Steve, as light on his feet as the Drift is on the mind, wielding his weapon like it is a part of his body. Breathing and moving and thinking in time. Tony presses his advantage, reels back and thrusts straight on toward Steve’s belly. Steve spins into it, his waist skimming along the length of the wood, and grabs hold of the bo an inch above Tony’s hands. Tony follows his own forward momentum, knowing Steve means to pull, and manages to turn the weapon instead, clip the back of Steve’s thigh to force the bend of his knee. 

He’s still not fast enough: Steve jams his bo end-first into the mat and heaves himself off the ground, _barely_ missing the end of Tony’s slice. He lands again with a thump. Tony switches his angle, comes in at shoulder-height and swipes the air right over Steve’s head as he arches backward. Tony goes for the kill, but Steve is two steps ahead of him, skipping out of range, waving Tony’s bo aside with a snick of wood. Tony feints, follows through when Steve slows, and has to arch his hips out of the way of a strike he feels more than sees. He turns as Steve did, right into Steve’s space. Steve’s eyes go wide, a bright flare of blue, and Tony hammers down with his weapon, stopping just short of Steve’s throat.

The instant he breathes, he feels the tap of wood against his ribs.

Their stillness is anything but quiet this time: the crowd shuffles excitedly. All of Steve’s previous opponents stare wide eyed, appreciation where it damn well should be on their features. But all Tony can see is the sweat beading on Steve’s upper lip, the shadow of the hair falling over his brow, the flushed cheeks and the tense jaw only a few inches from his own face. 

Steve draws up, and the talking ceases. The bo drops to his side in a single sweep. His chest rises and falls in a steady heave, and there is a new nakedness, an awareness in his eyes that trembles. 

“Tony,” he whispers.

Tony steps back and nearly trips. The wood is abruptly cold in his hand, the bo too heavy. The air between them shudders, a vibration that digs into his guts. He tears his gaze away, feels his throat swell. Swallows, and tries not to be sick. “I have to—”

He gestures, turns with the motion, and hurries off the mat. The crowd of onlookers parts for him, watching.

“Tony!” Steve calls.

He keeps walking. Keeps walking. 

 

_Go_

 

The Iron Avenger has the Commando’s shield. Builders beat the depressions back into shape long ago, welded the rents shut in wide silver shards that spear through the original paint like a star’s points. Tony smoothed the arcs and honed the edges, and vetoed the proffered refinish from day one. They all have scars, skin stitched together into something tougher, rawer. Fiercer. The Jaegers should not be discounted from their number.

The Avenger’s reactor heart pulses a steady blue, slicking the Shatterdome’s walls with watery ripples. Tony perches on the open rim of her chest plate, his hands black with grease. Under his fingertips is a much older part of the Jaeger: the dormant hydraulics of the original power system. The Avenger is cobbled together from parts of extinct Jaegers, what they could scrape up when the suits started falling en masse. Tony feels like he’s spent so much time mending, he’s forgotten how to build anything new. This particular section of torso dates back to before the first breach was closed, when the reliance lay on pistons and old-fashioned elbow grease to get a Jaeger moving.

It _is_ old, but the joints, the hammers and pistons, slide like a silken dream now that he’s done with them. It’ll do very well.

“You, Tony.”

He cranes around with a speed that makes his neck ache. Steve stands on the closest docking platform. The clamp holding the Avenger by the arm is monstrous beside him. Steve’s eyes are open, perfectly clear for the first time since he arrived.

Tony knows the entire statement, even though he’s heard none of it with his ears. “No.”

In his fatigue trousers and black boots, Steve stands almost at ease. Shoulders straight, facing everything head on. The dog tags glint like tiny mirrors over his chest. “No?”

Tony sighs, turns back to the gears, and then lets the pliers drop to his side. “Fury will never let me Drift.”

“Since when do you listen to Fury?”

Tony turns again, slowly, and looks Steve up and down. “Since when _don’t_ you?”

“He said you’d say no.” Steve looks… passive. It’s shockingly nostalgic, sharp enough to cut Tony’s next breath from his body. At one time, it irritated the shit out of him, and now… Now it… He grips the paneling and presses his heels to the plating to keep himself upright. Steve’s eyebrows climb as he continues. “That you were needed on the ground, that it was out of the question. I say he can go to hell.”

This time Tony jumps down. The bay is empty, everyone sane sleeping right now, and there is no one but Steve to hear the clank of Tony’s boots on the catwalk. Getting close to Steve is always difficult, but this time, his very lungs take offense. He goes anyway. “You’d go against his orders?” He gestures at the Avenger behind him. “For a suit you don’t even want?”

“For you,” Steve corrects, and Tony’s feet halt on their own. Steve lifts his chin, just a little. “For the right partner.”

It slices hard and fast in all the right places, places that go back way before Steve, before Tony let his engineering skills out to play and those skills snatched him out of the cockpits of the Jaegers and into their massive, magnificent guts instead. It’s been a long, long time since he’s even bothered to acknowledge that loss. There are plenty of other losses to take its place.

“I’m not the right partner,” he manages, looking down at his filthy hands. To look at Steve will be to undo each stitch of logic even as he sews it into place.

“You felt how we were together,” Steve says quietly, and hearing it is worse. In the corner of Tony’s vision, Steve’s chest rises and falls heavily. “You don’t understand. I am not _that_ anymore. I haven’t been that for _two years._ And suddenly, I was. Again. All the holes filled up, all the ruptures woven together, like I hadn’t ever been—” He pauses, Tony looks up, and Steve’s proximity dizzies, swings his attention home like a boom arcing round. Steve’s hand curls, just over his own heart like he’s trying to grip onto it. “You are the other half. My perfect fit.”

Tony reaches out to catch his balance, his palm thumps warm onto Steve’s chest, and a new memory roars in: that heat against his own, the heave of breath and the twist of muscle, fingers curled in a metal chain, the clink of tags like little bells—

_(Stark, I swear to god, if you don’t put that down and get some fucking rest—_

His own snarl, _Make me, you smug, self-righteous—)_

—a hand frenzied at his belt, cold wall, rasped heat against his cheek, against his jaw, his _mouth,_ a taste he’d craved for weeks, years, maybe his whole life, a hitch, a gasp raw through his throat, a thumb pressing at his lip as their mouths bruised each other, the nightmare blare of that godawful alarm.

As Steve had then, Tony pushes back now. But the space curls between them the same, the tumble in his gut is the same. 

He can hear Steve breathing. 

“I can’t partner you.” The worst part of all is that it’s the truth.

“You can.” Steve’s voice has not changed, the calm has gone nowhere, and Tony’s next sigh is much closer to sorrow.

“No, Steve,” he says, and pulls at his shirt collar, black smudges dragging over white cotton, yanking seams free until the neckline and the one layered beneath it hang low enough. “I can’t.”

It never feels warm against his skin, never cold. It’s a sensation he can’t describe in words, but it never lets up. A new, brighter blue washes over Steve’s face, and it’s always been so… so pretty. 

Until now. Steve’s hand hovers. His fingers touch down over that perfect cobalt light, shafts of darkness across the glow, and still Tony can see the orange of the blood snaking beneath his skin. “Tony.”

Steve knows, of course he knows what it is. Its colossal twin bathes them in light from above. But that’s not the question being asked at all. There’s no question, really, just an explanation that gets heavier every second it remains unspoken, and heavier all the more the moment Tony finally gives it voice.

“It’s the reason I’m alive, Steve.”

Steve’s fingers quiver. Tony feels the tremor of it as if Steve is plucking something inside his chest. “How long?”

“Since Indonesia,” and Steve stills completely, but Tony plows on. “When the seawall came down. The fuel vats exploded. There are other things in my chest besides a heart.”

The bay is silent.

“Indonesia.” 

The flatness of it should worry Tony, but everything, everything is a fucking travesty here, word to word, wrapping tighter and tighter around his air supply. “I can’t be in a suit. Outside, it’s fine, but in there, hooked into the same system…” Tony jabs his own chest, harder than he meant to, his fingertip jetting across the reactor’s surface. “This. Against one of those?” He points at the Avenger’s giant, radiant star. “Like two magnets repelling, dragging in all the wrong directions. One of them will screw the other one up, and I…” 

_I will not be responsible for that again, not with you._ He can’t finish.

Steve backs up, just one step that becomes a mile when his hand drops away from Tony’s chest. Tony stares dully down at it, the whole room immersed in that maddening, life-giving blue, and only now does Steve look sickly. His hand twitches once.

He opens his mouth, thank god, it’s something, something other than this horrible weight Tony has just dropped on them both. But then Steve’s mouth closes again. He turns around unsteadily and walks away.

It seems that all they do is walk away from each other.

 

_Shi_

 

Time is what they don’t have enough of. _Time_ is running out.

Maybe if Tony’d had more time after Indonesia, he could have fixed the suits’ reactors, or his own. Made the concept bigger, sharper. Cleaner. Above all, made them compatible. 

He has ideas, of course. Theories. Stop-gaps. But nothing that will withstand the power surges or weather the toll of a full-on Jaeger battle. His reactor and the suit’s might bump along for a stretch, but not forever. Not for long at all.

Tony’s throat burns like hot metal as the bourbon slicks down it. It’s hard to swallow; he chokes on humor that has been nothing but bitter for a good while. It _is_ funny, though. He’s using his time to the fullest and almost fixing things as fast as they shudder apart, but that’s all, and it’s not enough. It’s not damn well enough.

The worst, Tony thinks as he pours himself another three fingers, tipsy enough to slop a little over the side of the glass. The _worst…_ was standing there in the glow of the Avenger’s pulsing heart, and seeing that light that had been slowly climbing back into Steve’s eyes at last, right as it died. 

If Tony could have made that first reactor perfect, if he’d had the time, the Commando would not have failed out there in the surf. Barnes would still be alive, and Steve’s Drift would not have ripped to shreds.

Tony rubs the reactor in his chest and it feels like justice in fiery sapphire, a piece taken from him just as he’d taken a piece from Steve. He won’t live long enough to die from what he’s done to himself, not with the breach opening as often as it does. But he’d wanted…

He’d wanted to see what the arc reactor could become.

 

_San_

 

The Widow’s replacement leg joint squeals loudly, and the group of techs jump back as one, waving each other away from the bared pistons as the huge limb bends. But Tony shouts a halt, taps out commands, and the leg whines straight again. The Jaeger stands steadily, if stripped of significant sections of plating. She looks like skin and bones, atrophied muscle and barely healed wounds. To Tony’s right, Darcy wipes a greasy arm across her forehead and nods to him decisively.

“That’ll do, pig.”

Tony smirks, and Darcy smiles winningly.

“Baa ram ewe,” she bleats, and the alarm goes off, shattering her words.

 _“Triple incursion,”_ JARVIS intones into the ether. _“Category Seven, Category Seven, Category Eight.”_

“Get that damn plating back on!” His team moves like a dream, running toward the Jaeger, heaving the metal panels upright and welding them in place over the Widow’s innards in a matter of moments. The alarm continues to howl, red emergency lights clashing with all the blue. Above and to the left, the control room comes to life. Tony slings his laptop over his shoulder by its strap, hoists himself off the ground, and climbs up the Widow’s arm, hand over hand until he reaches her gaping shoulder alcove. He leans in, hooks up to the vibrating power hub, and cancels all the alerts that are about to go off when he turns the reactor’s power loose again. It’s a patch job, but it’ll hold, even if the safety systems all disagree.

Barton sprints into the hangar, yanking his gloves on. He swings himself up onto the Hawk and Shield’s head piece—the rest of the suit is locked down properly below ground, ready for reattachment—and shimmies inside through the top portal. An instant later, systems begin whirring to life. Barton’s co-pilot follows a moment later, helmet under his arm, waiting for the lift to rise to the proper level for boarding, and directing Fury’s underlings who follow directly after him.

Tony’s just closing the Widow’s shoulder when Romanoff appears, clipping up her chest guard, red hair bound tightly against her nape. She’s followed by a pale, pale woman whose frozen expression looks like a wall thrown up against raging nausea. Tony gives the armor a smack with his wrench and both of them look up. “She’s barely together. She’ll jolt you hard.”

“Will she walk for us?” Romanoff asks, as if about the weather.

“Ask her nicely.” The catwalks snap away from the Widow’s sides one by one, and the huge reactor flares fiercely into the hangar. Tony slides down the front of the suit and alights at a run, heading straight for the lift to the control room. 

Fury’s already directing the attachment of the Hawk and Shield’s head piece, and Darcy’s still-blackened fingers whip rapidly over the keyboard as she boots the bridging program. Steve is at her side in a plain army-issue tee and fatigues, frowning at the display, his dog tags dangling where he braces against the console. 

“Hawk and Shield’s neural handshake is stable,” Darcy reports. “Drift commencing. Pilot vitals coming onli—”

“Sir!” Hill shouts from the other side of the room. “Kaiju approaching the coastline.”

“Already?”

She shakes her head at the readings. “Don’t understand how they’re moving this fast—”

Fury spins and hammers the hangar’s speaker button. “Romanoff, Carter, hook in, yesterday!”

The Widow comes fully online even as Carter hoists herself up and over the lip of the helmet port, the wince clear on her face. As promised, hull integrity alarms begin a cascade of beeping. Tony commandeers a computer and circumvents them one by one, then opens the main hangar door in spite of the safety block, sending yellow lights flashing and techs running. He punches up the bridging program for the second Jaeger, waits for the instant Carter’s helmet registers as connected, and clicks the mic. “Carter, Romanoff, sailing in three. Two. One.”

For all the rush, their Drift whirls to life smoothly. Beneath the hangar, Tony can hear the _bangbangbang_ as the Hawk and Shield’s bay equalizes with the seawater and the submerged doors shudder open. Steve is talking down a headset, detailing the read from Hill’s computer to Barton and Coulson. Outside, the ocean roils, and then the Hawk and Shield’s head breaks the surface, rising as it walks up out of the depths.

The Widow’s still in the repair hangar when the first Kaiju erupts from the waves, serpentine with too many legs, each one full of rows of webbed digits ending in talons longer than Tony is tall. Barton and Coulson waste no time blowing off one of said legs with an explosive bolt shot from the Jaeger’s forearm. The Kaiju’s scream rattles the window of the comm room, and then the Widow splashes unsteadily out into the ocean and drops off, nearly vanishing under the surface before she finds her feet.

The purple predawn sky lights up in wild flashes under another blast from Barton and Coulson’s Jaeger. The suit moves beautifully; it’s the only one that does anymore, that is still made of all its original parts, sleek as a stealth jet. But even missing a leg, the Kaiju manages to wrap itself around the Hawk and Shield like a snake, and then, _then_ the second beast shows up.

It’s pure chance that the Widow is upright to meet it. She’s too close for weaponry, and hammers an arm straight into its sternum instead. The Kaiju, a bulky colossus of nightmarish black and bearing four too many eyes on the crown of its head, reels and nearly falls. The Widow wastes no time in attacking again, but pure drive cannot make up for ragtag joints, and by the time the blow strikes, the Kaiju is braced and ready.

It’s hell, watching. But it’s worse not to. Tony has tried both in the past, and now he knows better, stares hard at the mess unfolding in the ocean outside. Alarm after alarm blares from the terminals monitoring both suits. The Hawk and Shield uses up its projectiles trying to protect the Widow, to distract the third Kaiju that explodes out of the waves in a monstrous gush of foam. It works: the Widow is left with only one adversary, but Barton and Coulson’s Jaeger is forced onto its back in the surf, rolling and rolling with the serpentine beast as it bleeds molten blood into the sea.

 _“—thing has two hearts!”_ Barton yells. _“Swear we hit home that time!”_

They did. The first Kaiju is floundering but still very much alive, and the third, the Category Eight, is far too close for comfort.

 _“We have a leak,”_ Carter reports, her accent curling the words softly in spite of the tumult. _“Pumps have engaged but I doubt they can keep up.”_

Fury twists around, points. “Rogers, get your gear.”

Steve doesn’t answer, but Fury’s already away again, punching into the Shatterdome’s main comm. “Sitwell, get up to the repair hangar, now!”

_“Yes, sir.”_

Steve’s expression is something Tony can’t decipher, but it matches the way the whole world feels to him right at this moment: resigned and mutinous and afire.

Then the Hawk and Shield scores a hit, kills the first Kaiju… leaving the way wide open for the third to roar through and land a horror of a hit that dents in the left side of the Jaeger’s torso.

It takes three minutes of bone-grinding crunches and ear-splitting shrieks for Tony to know that their plan has officially been stonewalled. It hinged on a working suit with two healthy pilots and plenty of time to get to the breach with a heavy load. That’s gone now, battered away like the waves hammering against the cliffs. Even if they win—

Together the two Jaegers may hold this battle, but neither the Hawk and Shield nor the Widow will ever make it to the breach with their payload before another incursion.

Tony lifts his eyes from the glaring readouts to find Steve’s trained right on him. Steve’s face is taut, a knowing darkness in his gaze. Tony stares back. Rubs the convex surface of his arc reactor.

It’s a bad idea, the one Tony’s got right now. A bad idea that just might get the job done. He feels like it’s written all over his face, and Steve simply holds his gaze, steady as a rock. Tony inhales fast. “Feel like taking that stroll after all?”

“Read my mind,” Steve says immediately, then looks him over, a weighted sweep. “You’ll be safe?”

Tony shrugs. “If we keep it short.” It’s the truth, as far as it goes. “Not much of a choice anyway, Steve.”

Steve eyes him, _studies_ him. Then, after far too long a moment, he nods, and Tony leans over Darcy in the light of the computer screen.

“Calling in that favor,” he murmurs into her ear. She glances up. Her eyes skirt over him, then Steve, and finally dart to Fury where he’s shouting orders to the Jaeger pilots outside.

“Favor?” she says blandly even as she calls up the third bridging program and loads it through the back door, in the digital shadow of all the rest. Tony squeezes her shoulder, and when he turns, Steve’s hand is out, fingers brushing Tony’s spine as they run for the hangar. 

 

_Ni_

 

When their Drift joins, Tony sees himself first.

Standing in the repair hangar yesterday, dragging the collar of his shirt down to bare the most perfect blue light. Steve’s fingers hover— _touch down, hot, just bodies sounds teeth to lips, taste, oh god, flavor, arousal beyond anything, fuck_ —and then drop. It’s disorienting to realize they had the same memory in that moment of connection, they made the same jump, and then, a cruelness, a darkness, a pungent certainty.

 _I did this,_ Steve says to him across the bridge, with every inch of his being.

Tony struggles. No, Steve did not, this thing in his chest is not Steve’s fault. But Steve thinks it is, entirely, and the depth of that is a frozen blade in Tony’s core.

 _Should have been there,_ Steve says. Tony can see the frothing ocean, the cracked viewshield, James Barnes with his hand outstretched, Redskull leering outside, and then, oh, then that horrific darkness, the creaks and groans of machinery falling dormant, the blue light seeping away like Kaiju Blue. _Should never have allowed the Commando to fall, because that let Redskull through the wall. To you._

This. This is what Steve thought, an inch from Tony, seeing the reactor in his chest for the first time? No anger. No distaste, no rage, no sadness at all, just untainted despair.

The thought occurs without thought— _if I’d been a better engineer—_

Steve immediately shuts him down, _You did the best you could, don’t be an idiot!_ But if Tony can see Steve’s guilt, then Steve can surely see where Tony’s lies: in the heart of a Jaeger that failed, and the loss of Steve’s dearest friend.

They stand there in their misery and stare at each other across oceans of memory, and what’s left of Tony’s heart breaks.

A minute at most. Fury shouts at them through the comm, but Darcy has done her work and the Iron Avenger is now fully under their control. Tony and Steve step forward together without a plan, just intention whipping back and forth, a tether between their minds. The Jaeger clears the hangar and plunges into the sea.

But… _Steve._

There are parts of Steve’s mind that are rusty and brown, like old blood. It hangs in ragged curtains, and flakes of it swirl in tiny huffs as they fall, dirty snow, but in the middle is the _fiercest_ heat. Gold, and starlight, the center of the sun. It’s Steve, and it singes the edges of that raggedness, curling it slowly, slowly back.

Steve is exquisite, life and death in the very same moment, his mortality aching like a tang across the tongue. He is a child—he’s a kid, spindly and slight, swayed by a gust of wind on an icy street, he’s a—god, he’s a man, a doer in a world where there are so few, he’s excited, he’s furious, he’s devastated and uncertain and in lo… Steve’s in love, he’s in love and it hurts so much, and it feels, finally, whole.

Tony gives up his barriers, because here, inside Steve’s head, it’s only a matter of time anyway. As the Avenger surfaces, as Steve draws them up from the waves, Tony pulls his console closer, strips the wires, hooks himself up with the sparking ends. Breaks through to the middle of the code and syncs his reactor with the Jaeger’s.

He knows by the sudden roiling across the Drift that Steve has seen it all, beginning to end, just as Tony has.

 _No, damn it!_ Steve explodes, and everything Tony didn’t say in the control room floods back at him in pictures. _You didn’t tell me it would end like that!_ Tony hears rage, disbelief in Steve’s voice. Understanding. Of course Steve understands what he means to do as well as what will happen, but they need this.

_We need this._

Steve does not argue.

The Iron Avenger is capable of flight. More of a hop, but for a Jaeger, such a leap is lengthy. Tony cobbled her together from the Valkyrja and the Commando, and even that short-lived behemoth that Bruce fondly called the Hulk while he was still alive. When it became clear that some of the Kaiju had the ability to fly, Tony made sure at least one of the Jaegers could follow, take them down.

Whether he agrees with the endgame or not, Steve helps Tony power the thrust, and the Avenger rockets upward, arching away from the battle. The energy required makes the main reactor shudder, but with Tony’s reactor there to feed the lack, the suit’s trajectory does not suffer.

Across the Drift, Steve grabs his hand. _TONY._

He meets eyes the color of the sky and it hurts to have shown Steve this, that they are so completely out of options. It hurts that there is no part of his mind that he can keep to himself, just so that Steve could be spared a repeat of this pain. Tony puts it into the words he still possesses.

 _When we reach the breach, we need power or we’re_ all _done. We need to be able to get the reactor in._

The rest is images: the implosion, the shockwave, the energy readouts, his own reactor overloading under the strain, Steve, Steve having to lose _again,_ fucking hell, Tony has a lot to apologize for and he begins now, every fiber of himself, just as the Jaeger crashes into the ocean’s surface a mile from the breach.

And Steve just squeezes his hand. His real hand, reaching across the cockpit and tangling their fingers together.

 _Don’t,_ Steve says, a murmur on a summer’s day. _Tony. Not for doing what’s necessary, what… what no one else can do._

Tony could fall into this sadness, this anger and resignation, the unfairness of Steve’s life even before the Jaegers, when the world stamped him down and Barnes was all he had, and then Barnes wasn’t the only one, the confusion of being given someone new and perfect and challenging and, damn it, everything, only to have him taken away again, and Tony cannot breathe because… it’s not Barnes at all. 

Their Drift cradles him. He can smell Steve as if his nose is touching Steve’s skin.

The Avenger plunges into blackness, down and down, homing in. She’ll be a juddering wreck when this is all over, but Steve will be up and away, that at least will happen without Tony. He can feel the magnetic wrenching in his chest, so much more than that weary, ever-present tug, and the breach shimmers into view, as orange as molten rock. The sensors read no fluctuations, no incursion, and that’s all they need, please, please hold it just a little bit longer and then they’ll be done.

The Avenger’s glowing heart beams light across the ocean floor, and together, Steve and Tony step toward the light that beckons back. They’re almost upon it when the seafloor rocks, rumbles, shakes them nearly off its surface like an insect swatted away.

Incursion.

Tony looks at Steve, his face awash in the red blare of the alert. Whatever comes through, they cannot wait around to see it.

 _Activating detachment protocols,_ Tony says, fingers flying over his console, disconnecting power feeds and syncing back-up mechanisms. Steve takes the reins, guiding their steps as he speeds the Avenger across the sea floor. Ahead, the breach surges, light spilling from within like spurts of magma.

The main comm clicks. _“Stark,”_ Fury snaps, _“this had better damn well work!”_ From the sounds on the other end, Barton’s distorted rush and Romanoff’s shouts, they’ve left behind a defeat just waiting to slam home. 

“It will, sir.” It’s Steve who answers, in a leaden voice that peels the skin of Tony’s heart back. His fingers falter.

“Steve?” he whispers. It’s so quiet, and yet it echoes across the cockpit. Steve looks him in the eye.

“Do it.” 

When the giant reactor disconnects, the entire Jaeger trembles. Tony feels the yank like a hand gripped round his lungs, dragging it all upward through his ribcage. He sucks in the deepest breath he can manage, rams the final stabilizing code home, and it eases. Seconds, they’ll have seconds until that code disintegrates. Steve’s acknowledgement floods across the Drift, and then the giant reactor is in the Avenger’s hands, a vortex of swirling blue light.

Tony’s vision tunnels, the edges going dark. He can’t get enough air, his lips are numb, his fingers and hands and legs disappearing like smoke on a breeze. But he can see the blue. He can see Steve’s profile, his perfect, forceful movements, the way he clutches bare air so that the Avenger can clutch their makeshift bomb. Tony sees his own hands gripping the space before him. He forces his eyes open, stretches out one last time, and hits keys he doesn’t feel, from memory. 

_Countdown engaged._ All Steve has to do is drop it. And then get the hell out.

Yet even as Tony envisions that last part, the jettisoned escape pod and the rush to the surface, he knows Steve won’t do it. Steve will stay. There’s nothing Tony can do to make him leave. The breach cracks even wider, the ground eaten away beneath the Avenger’s feet, and together, they stretch out their arms.

Just as the reactor drops, Steve shows Tony the memory he wanted

_wall giving way to bed Tony’s hand curled tight around the bunk’s frame around Steve’s fingers bare flesh so much skin heat Tony’s knees tight to Steve’s ribs and Steve in him and nowhere do they not touch and when Steve breathes it is Tony’s breath_

and then the reactor in Tony’s chest lights white as a supernova.

 

_Ichi_

 

Steve’s father comes home drunk, snow crusting his shoulders. Kitchen is warm, soup on the stove. Wind rattles the window, his mother turns—

Tony’s mother combs carefully through raven curls, camera-gleam, _No, Tony, I told you, sit down right now,_ and pictures, pictures in a shining city. She smiles and waves and clasps Howard around the waist, _This missile will redefine warfare for our age—_

A broken city, skyscraper tombstones. Camera-flash, pictures, pictures of the first Jaeger, and _this_ is what will redefine warfare for their age, not a hunk of bolts and heat seeking computer codes—

4F. 4F, because Steve is small, and weak, and sick inside that his heart belongs to a stronger body, and he can’t, he’ll never be able to—

White light, cold shearing through his chest, blood soaking his shirt. _Pepper! Pepper… Run…_ Starlight through the broken seawall. Failed, can’t breathe, can’t breathe—

New pilot, golden hair, perfect scores, fifty drops, fifty kills. Tony wants to build a Jaeger just for him, and then their eyes meet and their mouths open, and all of it just shatters on a few fucking words, _nothing but a Brooklyn brat with a Kaiju-sized inferiority complex_ and _just sliding by on his coattails, not half the man your father was—_

_Steve._

Can’t run, can’t fight. Never been able to breathe. Asthma and illness and heart trouble, life fashioned from the wreck left by bullies, mother dead, father dead, everything to prove—

Can’t win, can’t succeed. Never been able to impress. Expectations and disappointments and not enough spark, life fashioned from the dregs of parental legacy, mother dead, father dead, a world to snub—

_Tony?_

Water like ice, metal rending, no power, teeth through the faceplate. _Bucky, oh, GOD, Bucky—_ the void through a torn thought. Redskull, through a torn wall. Failed, can’t breathe. Can’t breathe—

_I wanted you. It was all I wanted, just one thing I could have, one person who looked at me and didn’t see what I saw every day in the mirror. Who looked, and saw my heart. What could we both have been if not for this hell?_

Cities in ruins. Hot blue blood and clean blue light and warm blue eyes. 

_Tony!_

His chest swells like something pushing from within, his soul, maybe, striving to get out, and _God, Tony, breathe! BREATHE!_

_Zero_

 

He wakes. His chest expands too much and he coughs, jolts, arches off the ground.

“Tony!” Steve pulls off of him, snatches him around the shoulders and lowers him back to the... He doesn’t know. Can’t breathe, can’t think. Just coughs and coughs. He rolls onto his side, trying to find air, and Steve’s hands guide him, cradle his head above the... sand, it’s sand, wet, crusted against his face, in his eyes. The first real breath into his lungs rattles and he heaves it back out. Steve pulls him off the ground into an embrace and breathing gets easier, a little. Tony hacks into Steve’s chest, cold plating and oil and grit, and then Steve shifts him, and his nose slides against warmth instead. Skin. Steve’s throat, still covered in sand and tasting of metal, but _warm_ and _soft,_ fluttering with the beat of blood beneath his skin.

Tony reaches up, heavy, so damned heavy, but he reaches, grabs hold of Steve’s shoulder and shuts his eyes and breathes.

It takes him a moment to realize he’s rocking. Steve rocks him back and forth, a gentle give and take. Tony can feel the heat now, bleeding into numb fingers and chilled body. His chest piece is gone, just the woven shirt they all wear underneath, soaked through and dripping. When next Steve’s fingers slide through his hair, they are just fingers, the gloves off.

“Thank god, thank god, thank god.” Steve murmurs it over and over, a litany in Tony’s ear. He figures out his arms and wraps them around Steve just to cling. To hold himself, hold them both here for a minute.

The sky is luminous, clouds in sheets overhead, and the ocean thumps like a heartbeat. A wave rolls up around Tony, saltwater sucking at his thighs and feet, but Steve doesn’t move. His fingers rub through Tony’s hair slowly, lines of heat over his scalp. A hundred feet away, the Iron Avenger lies twisted in the surf, its legs disappearing under the water. Sparks flicker in the gash that was the chest plate, deep inside the yawning hole where the reactor used to be. There is so much damage, burns and slices and soot, and the helmet lies like a clamshell opened wide. From where they are, Tony can see the leftovers of the cockpit.

It’s daylight, just after dawn. The sea beyond the shore is calm. Tony licks his lips and tastes Steve there.

“Did it.” It’s barely a voice at all. He tries again. “Did.”

 _“Yes,”_ Steve hisses. He’s squeezing too tight, it hurts, it’s glorious. He pulls away roughly, turns Tony’s face to his, and mashes his mouth to Tony’s, kisses him, pries him open and yanks the entire world out from under him, just heat and breath and the click of teeth.

It ends as it began. Tony pants, Steve’s exhalations rushing over his face. 

“Yes, damn you, it worked,” Steve whispers. This time it cracks. A tear works its way down Steve’s cheek from the corner of his eye, carving through the ash, and Tony makes a broken sound. He reaches for his chest, and his limbs won’t cooperate, won’t do what he wants, until Steve takes his hand and folds his own around it. Guides them both to the cool circle just over Tony’s sternum. Their palms press over the curve, and Steve’s grip tenses.

Light, sweet and fresh and blue, shines out from between their fingers.

“Shit,” Tony mutters. He closes his eyes and slumps back into Steve’s sure hold. In his ear, Steve’s heart beats a rapid tattoo. “Shit.”

He hears the rotors for a long time before he can get himself to open his eyes again. The air licks at his face, sand kicking up against his lips. He reaches up, finds the line of Steve’s jaw rough with stubble, nicked and gritty and warm. His thumb alights on Steve’s lower lip, right at the corner, and Tony strokes wonderingly.

The helicopter lands a quarter mile out, blades whumping, and waves break over the landing skids. Tony sighs further down into Steve’s arms, feeling that hand back in his hair.

“It’s over?” he pleads, because even now, even like this with Steve a heartbeat away, alive, he can’t be sure.

Down the beach, Barton splashes through the surf, one arm held tight against his chest. And still, he jumps up, he whoops, a glorious clarion of sound. 

“Oh _god,”_ Steve whispers, and tucks Tony’s head to his. The salt of Steve’s tears stings Tony’s lips, and Tony can feel a weary, broken smile against his own.

 

…

 

_Stop the clock._

 

~fin~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, so this was WAY too much fun to write. And now I need to go buy the DVD. Obviously.
> 
> Thank you so much to coffeejunkii for reading this story as it developed and for being a fantastic sounding board.
> 
> (The countdown featured in ch. three is ten to zero in Japanese. Title "Annus Mirabilis" is Latin for "year of wonders.")


End file.
